How To Do a Cover Version

Ask any Brit to name things which are truly American, they will recite a list to include one or more of the following:

a) obesity (like, we can talk…)

b) a tendency to elect idiots to positions of power (like, we can talk…)

c) an unhealthy attachment to firearms (phew!)

d) an inability to understand irony

e) joining World Wars really quite late indeed

(American readers – I mean no offence by this. I’m sure you have a similarly inaccurate check-list for us Limeys, he says as he cocks his bowler hat to one side and tucks his newspaper under one arm, umbrella under the other)

Eventually, though, they will say Route 66.

Route 66 originally ran from Chicago, Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain), Texas, New Mexico and Arizona before ending at Santa Monica, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that it is a road of folklore, and which many male Brits embark on a pilgrimage to drive along at some point in their lives.

But for those of us in the know, there is a much better version. An anglicised one. One which extols the virtues of one of our greatest roads. I speak of none other than the hallowed turf that is the A13: